When ‘Goblin Mode’ became a thing, I finally found my people

Recently, when I read that almost a million people had voted for “Goblin Mode” to win Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year, I let out a high-pitched cackle. Without even having to look it up, I knew what it meant; I was finally on trend.

Although the Oxford publishers snootily describe it as “a type of behaviour which is unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way which rejects social norms or expectations”, I think that’s nonsense.

Goblin mode is a perfectly reasonable reaction to the existential nightmare that is 2022, where everything feels better when you’re still in your PJs at 4pm, eating Pringles from the can.

I entered Goblin Mode earlier this year, when I agreed to write a book with a very tight deadline. It coincided with my partner going overseas for several weeks, leaving me with the ideal writing companions; a 19-year-old boy and a cat (basically two housecats).

The spouse is much tidier than me; the minute he left the house, it devolved into a state I would describe as “early Helen Garner Fitzroy shared house” or Withnail and I (without Uncle Monty). You could have filmed an entire series of The Young Ones in our kitchen and never run out of material. A friend’s immune system was greatly boosted by a short visit, she claims, and may have cured her asthma.

Within days, my son and I regressed to cave-dwelling hobbits, texting each other from our beds. If you rarely leave the house, can you dispense with bourgeois notions of personal hygiene and fresh clothes? Of course you can. Basically, the only occupant who stayed clean was the cat.

In our defence, it was a very cold winter, but did I have to put on a purple Uniqlo fleece jacket and ugg boots every single day? Going out for milk one morning, the local charity workers mistook me for a homeless person and offered me free food. What I did look like, in fact, was Barney the Dinosaur.

Although the term “goblin mode” has been around for a while, it surged in popularity after lockdown restrictions eased, when people decided they didn’t want to go back to underwired bras and proper trousers. The Oxford University Press said the phrase “captured the prevailing mood of individuals who … rebelled against the increasingly unattainable aesthetic standards and unsustainable lifestyles exhibited on social media”.